The Elusive Pimpernel [95]
Thus some burghers of Boulogne became ardent reactionaries, whilst others secretly nursed enthusiastic royalist convictions: some were ready to throw in their lot with the anarchists, to deny the religion of their fathers, to scorn the priests and close the places of worship; others adhered strictly still to the usages and practices of the Church.
Arrest became frequent: the guillotine, erected in the Place de la Senechaussee, had plenty of work to do. Soon the cathedral was closed, the priests thrown into prison, whilst scores of families hoped to escape a similar fate by summary flight.
Vague rumours of a band of English adventurers soon reached the little sea-port town. The Scarlet Pimpernel--English spy or hero, as he was alternately called--had helped many a family with pronounced royalist tendencies to escape the fury of the blood-thirsty Terrorists.
Thus gradually the anti-revolutionaries had been weeded out of the city: some by death and imprisonment, others by flight. Boulogne became the hotbed of anarchism: the idlers and loafers, inseparable from any town where there is a garrison and a harbour, practically ruled the city now. Denunciations were the order of the day. Everyone who owned any money, or lived with any comfort was accused of being a traitor and suspected of conspiracy. The fisher folk wandered about the city, surly and discontented: their trade was at a standstill, but there was a trifle to be earned by giving information: information which meant the arrest, ofttimes the death of men, women and even children who had tried to seek safety in flight, and to denounce whom--as they were trying to hire a boat anywhere along the coast--meant a good square meal for a starving family.
Then came the awful cataclysm.
A woman--a stranger--had been arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Gayole and the town-crier publicly proclaimed that if she escaped from jail, one member of every family in the town--rich or poor, republican or royalist, Catholic or free-thinker--would be summarily guillotined.
That member, the bread-winner!
"Why, then, with the Duvals it would be young Francois-Auguste. He keeps his old mother with his boot-making ..."
"And it would be Marie Lebon, she has her blind father dependent on her net-mending."
"And old Mother Laferriere, whose grandchildren were left penniless ... she keeps them from starvation by her wash-tub."
"But Francois-Auguste is a real Republican; he belongs to the Jacobin Club."
"And look at Pierre, who never meets a calotin but he must needs spit on him."
"Is there no safety anywhere? ... are we to be butchered like so many cattle? ..."
Somebody makes the suggestion:
"It is a threat ... they would not dare! ..."
"Would not dare? ..."
'Tis old Andre Lemoine who has spoken, and he spits vigorously on the ground. Andre Lemoine has been a soldier; he was in La Vendee. He was wounded at Tours ... and he knows!
"Would not dare? ..." he says in a whisper. "I tell you, friends, that there's nothing the present government would not dare. There was the Plaine Saint Mauve ... Did you ever hear about that? ... little children fusilladed by the score ... little ones, I say, and women with babies at their breasts ... weren't they innocent? ... Five hundred innocent people butchered in La Vendee ... until the Headsman sank--worn not ... I could tell worse than that ... for I know. ... There's nothing they would not dare! ..."
Consternation was so great that the matter could not even be discussed.
"We'll go to Gayole and see this woman at any rate."
Angry, sullen crowds assembled in the streets. The proclamation had been read just as the men were leaving the public houses, preparing to go home for the night.
They brought the news to the women, who, at home, were setting the soup and bread on the table for their husbands' supper. There was no thought of going to bed or of sleeping that night. The bread-winner in every family and all those dependent on him for daily sustenance were trembling for their lives.
Resistance to the